With each new year brings a clean slate and a list of resolutions – a list of aspirations for ourselves to hopefully accomplish in the new year. Perhaps you already have your list of aspirations for 2012, folded and tucked into your wallet to look at each day. Or possibly you haven't had a moment to write them down let alone take the time to think about writing them down! If you have been organizing yourself and your home and your life this month along with the Vegan Living column, then you have a pretty grand jumpstart to 2012.I have a solution to resolution confusion. Rather than thinking …
With the new year comes the mad rush for the elliptical machines. As we drive down our main street, we see the lights in the gym ablaze, shining on the brand new gym clothes of locals working off their holiday temptations. While yes, engaging in physical activity is a must, here are some additional ways to get your mind and body back to basics this new year.Massage: Most insurance carriers will now allow copays for a massage, so check your health plans immediately. Massage is one of the most amazing ways to release toxins and stress, increase circulation and keep your muscles and tendons …
How better to be your best self than to eat properly? By eating well, your body naturally functions at a more efficient level and provides energy, stamina and the ability to focus. Fuel yourself with valuable nutrients in every meal by preparing your pantry.Homemade is the easiest way to fuel yourself properly, as you know every ingredient being used. Preparing your own meals is not only more nutritious, but forces an understanding of how well your body reacts to ingredients closest to the source.Here is a list of must-have pantry items, thanks to Terry Walters, author of Clean Start and …
Happy New Year! As we talked about last week, being the best you at all times could make for some pretty awesome and positive changes in your life, including health, wealth and well-being. This week, let's begin with the home front, preparing yourself for the new year and revitalized you ahead.1. Clean out your cabinets: Lurking in your pantry is savings, I promise. We open our cupboards some nights when we are hungry and stare at boxes of unprepared food and sigh, "Let's order in." Stop! Clean out your pantry immediately and organize your shelves. Baking items together (baking soda/powder, …
The holiday season comes to a close and New Year's Eve springs upon us, bringing wishes of cheer and the promise of a clean slate to begin anew.While the decadent sweets of the holidays are inevitable, so too are the creative cocktails of entertaining all season long. A few months ago, Vegan Living shared our favorite autumnal beers and now we present the veganized versions of some favorite cocktails to ring in the new year.Champagne is a New Year's staple and believe it or not, your favorite brands are vegan friendly. Choose from the following, but be sure to note that other versions of …
All month long, Vegan Living has been sharing fabulous cruelty-free gifts from local shops with readers and this week we give the best gift of all.The gift of compassion.My day-job is being the marketing and public relations manager for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Long Island and for the past six weeks, I have managed our holiday program. Responsible for securing gifts for 112 families and more than 200 children across Long Island, I have woken myself up at night thinking about the meetings, calls and hopes that all would pan out to have enough donated gifts for children who are facing …
Bobbie Peters, who commented on last week's Vegan Living column is the lucky winner of a gift certificate compliments of the Feldis Florist in Merrick! Happy shopping! Please send your address to Emily.Cappiello@patch.com to claim your prize!Focusing is tough during the holiday season. With work and family obligations, the holidays creep up too quickly. This year, I got into the spirit early and had my holiday cards in the mail by Dec. 6. In fact, I even permitted the Bert and Ernie's holiday song album to infiltrate my car's CD player for the children before my usual Dec. 10 mark. However, …
To kick-off this week's gift guide, Vegan Living congratulates:Carolyn Redmond who commented on last week's Vegan Living gift guide and is the lucky winner of a Luanne's gift certificate! Happy shopping Carolyn! Please send your address to Emily.Cappiello@patch.com to claim your prize.December tends to fly by with holiday happenings booking up our calendars. Friends, coworkers and family entertain with flair and when you arrive, it's kind to show your gratitude with a thoughtful token of appreciation. While a hostess gift is a lovely way to thank someone for their hospitality, remember that …
Did you shop Small Business Saturday with your American Express card last weekend? I did. I was browsing through Luanne's on Merrick Avenue in Merrick and checked off two friends on my gift list. Both items were gorgeous and cruelty-free, as will all my shopping be.It's simple to shop cruelty-free, and locally to boot. For the next four weeks, I'll even make it a bit simpler as Vegan Living shares the local hotspots and hotspots for cruelty-free gifts – and in the holiday spirit, one lucky reader each week will win a cruelty-free giveaway (see more details below after the gift guide).…
While history debates itself on the date and location of the first Thanksgiving celebration, the meaning of the feast remains consistent. It is a celebration of the year's harvest, thankful for the bounty of the earth.In fact, as the most popular story goes, the colonists in Plymouth did not have enough food to feed even half of their colonists and it was the Wampanoag Indians that provided them seeds as well as taught them how to fish to nourish their community. There were festivities that lasted for days and a peaceful relationship between the colonists and Wampanoag tribe for decades after…
I received a great email last week from a Vegan Living reader:"I read your articles all the time online, and I would like to try to become vegan. Where can I turn for enough beginner advice to get me a whole week's worth of support?"In 2008, I said I was an "aspiring vegan". I still ate my ice cream and ate pizza and cheese. Yet I loved the idea of veganism, I wanted to try it and excel at it. I didn't want to just test the waters, I wanted to jump in and be immersed in something that I saw as more than throwing paint at ladies in fur or eating tofurkey. I wanted to understand why one would …
Tis the season for warm meals on our tables, and there is no better way to serve up a hearty meal for many, including leftovers, then making soup.Soup does not need to be the sodium infused stock variety lining the supermarket shelves, nor does it need to be a boring, oily concoction. Rather, start with onions sautéing in the pan and hot water on your own stovetop, and imagine what low-fat, heart-healthy and fueling food you can create. Soups make an excellent lunch alternative and made using fresh ingredients in your own kitchen, you can be sure that you will get a fabulous dose of your …
With the odd snowfall this past weekend, it's just about as obvious as ever that our planet is either trying to right itself or is freaking out, and I must say I'm leaning towards agreeing with the latter. After reading a particularly shocking article last week depicting the state of the world's population crisis, can we do a bit more to impact the planet a bit less during our day to day? Veganism is based on the idea of refraining from harm to another. That leaves a lot of room for living positively beyond our food choices. Inside your home lies many an option for lessening your footprint …
This past week, I was on a whole foods adventure, avoiding all sugar, flour and processed ingredients. Why? I was on a mission to discover if the impact, if any, of avoiding such things could be realized within just one week's time. Can one's body realize it's optimal performance by eating as close to the source as possible? A self-professed chocoholic, my sweet tooth was a tough opponent the first day or two, but by day three, my cravings had ceased. I didn't need bread or sugary foods. By day four, the sliced red pepper in my salad tasted like the sweetest treat. I was fuller, faster, from …
My mother was ahead of her time. In the late 1980s, she had my brothers and I tested for food sensitivities and allergies and upon learning of my brothers' aversions to wheat, corn and dairy, she changed our dietary lifestyle from the standard American diet to a healthful, often interesting, diet. She stopped the milkman from delivering fresh, whole milk to our milk box on the stoop, she stopped buying mayonnaise, pizza was no longer served on Friday nights and she bought a Wok. We were frequenting McDonald's less and less and there was no more coughing in the mornings due to switching from …
I know in our house, exhaustion has a knack for sneaking up on us, especially when you were hoping to be most energized, perhaps on a Friday night at 8 p.m. after you finished a long week and put the children to bed. In my profession of marketing and public relations coupled with being a mom, I need to be "on" at all times. There is rarely downtime, and I happen to be someone that fills in my free time with Crossfit, blogging and adventures with the children. I had mentioned a few columns ago that according to Brendan Brazier, the Ironman author of Thrive and Thrive Foods, coffee and other …
After finally watching Forks Over Knives, the compelling documentary based on both clinical and scientific results of whole food-plant based diets, I immediately followed @DrEsselstyn and @Macdanzigmma (Vegan MMA fighter) on Twitter. I love Twitter for it's simple, efficient and quick stream of informative and up to the minute information on topics of interest, and #vegan is one of those that brings up a wide array of opinions, news and resources.All this social networking can be overwhelming and sometimes that feed looks daunting, which is why balancing who you are following is so vital to …
My husband and I joke that we are in a mixed marriage – he's a diehard Giants fan and I, while born and raised in New York, bleed blue and silver for the Dallas Cowboys. Sundays at our house are serious. So much so, that since having children, whosever team is playing home is the team whose jersey the children will wear. It is tradition that our friends and family gather at our house for good food, beer and cheering on Sundays. For the past six years, we have had many a day turn into night watching football with our favorite people, with the food being replenished every quarter. Things haven'…
When I found out that there were vegan-friendly beers on the market, I immediately thought, "What would make beer not vegan?" My quest for the answer landed me on one of the best vegan-beverage-answer-seeking websites in my book, barnivore.com. Barnivore has an awesome search feature, and with the exception of a few truly obscure foreign brewing companies, you can determine the veg-friendiness of just about every beer imaginable. So, what makes a beer not vegan? The obvious is if it contains honey, it's not vegan. The less obvious is in the filtering process and sometimes even the ingredient…
Activism dances on the gray line, and oftentimes, actions are a step or two beyond that line. I completely understand why the word vegan and the organization PETA, often considered interchangeable, receive a sneer and no one wants to hear about it. Vegan activists are considered to be those who defy the law and shake fingers at others, chanting "Meat is Murder" and throw paint at ladies in fur. By sidestepping the stereotype, acting on behalf of veganism can include inspiring conversation, thoughtfulness and compassion from others. I look forward every day to questions about the way I eat, …
